"Teleportation Magic!"
Erigor was momentarily startled, but he quickly regained his composure, bursting into a manic, arrogant laugh. "So what if you can teleport? Erza, did you really think you could stall me with a mere child?"
Erza's reputation was legendary, and the moment she had initiated her assault, Erigor had funneled every ounce of his concentration into their duel. Consequently, he had completely missed the systematic dismantling of his subordinates on the ground below.
Before activating the Wind Wall, he had noticed his underlings being rounded up by the Kingdom's army, but he wasn't surprised. He considered them fodder.
He knew that any team capable of aiding the army in such a swift victory couldn't be weak—especially seeing the fire mage survive the Wind Wall's shredding force—but he looked at the boy before him and felt nothing but disdain. After all, age was usually a direct indicator of magical reserve.
In his mind, the three adults were the real threats. This brat was likely only here because he possessed a niche utility spell like teleportation. He did find it odd that the boy hadn't teleported Erza out with him, leading Erigor to conclude the boy's magical capacity was too low to carry others.
However, being a professional assassin, Erigor decided to eliminate the variable immediately. He funneled his full power into a single, lethal strike.
"Storm Shredder!"
His Death Scythe blurred in a high-speed rotation, unleashing a dense, chaotic net of wind blades capable of slicing through enchanted steel. He intended to turn Goku into a cloud of red mist.
Inside the Wind Wall, Erza and the others felt a pang of anxiety seeing the "Death God" go all-out against the boy. However, their confidence in Goku remained steady. Erza knew from Mira that Goku was a functional S-Class, while Natsu and Gray had just witnessed his overwhelming martial utility.
"All-Concentration Breathing: Giant's Fist!"
Goku didn't reach for his wand or prepare a Ki blast. Instead, he opted to test his newest acquisition: Giant Magic. He wanted to see how the Guild Master's teachings fared against a genuine S-Class opponent.
Taking a sharp, deep breath that expanded his lungs to their limit, Goku's right arm suddenly swelled into a massive, muscular limb. He threw a straight punch with everything he had.
*BOOM!*
The atmospheric pressure was so intense it created a visible sonic boom. The sheer "fist-wind" generated by the physical displacement of air obliterated the incoming wind blades before Goku's hand even reached them. His fist continued to extend forward, hurtling toward Erigor's solar plexus.
"WHAT?!"
Erigor's eyes nearly bulged out of his sockets. To dispel high-level wind magic with the mere air pressure of a physical punch... how much raw strength did this child possess?
A blue magic circle flared as he desperately activated his Storm Mail, coating himself in a protective vortex of wind to become a Storm Giant. At the same time, he raised his Death Scythe to parry the incoming strike.
*SNAP!*
The Death Scythe snapped like a dry twig.
Even Erza's demonic broadsword hadn't broken the scythe; it had only knocked Erigor away. But this boy's punch had shattered the weapon entirely. The difference in concentrated force was staggering, and Erigor knew it.
Before he could even process the terror, Goku's fist punched straight through the Storm Mail and buried itself in Erigor's gut.
The assassin's body vanished from the air, reappearing only when he smashed through his own "impenetrable" Wind Wall. He skipped across the pavement like a stone on a lake, coming to a stop as a mangled heap at the feet of Erza, Natsu, and Gray.
The "Death God" was dead. The Wind Wall flickered and dissipated instantly.
"Aw man, I didn't control my strength well enough!" Goku landed softly, patting the back of his head with a look of genuine annoyance. "I guess I need to do more precision training when I get back."
The rapid increase in power from his Giant Magic training had made his baseline strength so high that he was struggling to "pull" his punches as accurately as before.
Normally, a martial artist of his caliber would have sensed the moment the opponent's body reached its breaking point and retracted part of the force. Erigor should have been a heavily injured captive, not a pancake.
To a typical Fairy Tail mage, property damage and overkill were just part of the job. But to a true martial artist like Goku, the inability to perfectly master one's own output was a failure of discipline.
'One thousand weighted squats as soon as I get home,' he noted mentally.
"So... so strong!"
Erza and the others stared at the remains of the S-Class villain. Erza silently recalibrated her assessment of Goku. 'Unless I used the Adamantine Armor and deployed its absolute shield, I couldn't have blocked that strike,' she thought.
While she still believed her versatility and speed could give her an edge in a real duel, Goku's sheer destructive ceiling was now undeniably higher than her own.
"Wastes... all of you are useless! If you can't do it, I'll do it myself!"
Just as the group relaxed, a chilling, distorted voice echoed through the station. The bone flute, Lullaby, which had been hanging from Erza's belt, suddenly floated into the air. It let out a ghastly, screeching laugh.
The air around the flute darkened and warped. In a horrific display of dark energy, the small artifact expanded and transformed, growing until a three-hundred-meter-tall, multi-eyed wood-and-shadow demon towered over the canyon.